Despite a request from the Bangladesh government to review the ban on migrant workers from their country, Malaysia has decided to continue to freeze their recruitment, Premier Najib Tun Razak Najib has told his counterpart Sheikh Hasina on the sidelines of the CHOGM.
Malaysia has frozen the recruitment of foreign labour except for critical sectors.
Najib said many Bangladeshi workers had been duped by the agents into believing that they would get well-paying jobs in Malaysia. The ban, he said, is aimed at preventing the workers from being exploited by these agents.
“This is the kind of deception that we want to prevent,” he said after meeting Hasina at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in Port of Spain.
The Cabinet first decided to freeze the intake of Bangladeshi workers in 1999 followed by another such decision in October 2007.
In March this year, the Cabinet cancelled visas of Bangladeshi nationals who obtained work permits in 2007 but were yet to enter the country.
